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AMERICAN PARTY: 



ITS PRINCIPLES. ITS OBJECTS. AM) ITS HOPES. 



Hv GEO. ROBERTSON. LX. D; 



FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY. 

A. G. HODGES & CO. PRINTERS 
1855. 



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"\ 



THE AMERICAN PARTY: 
ITS PRINCIPLES, ITS OBJECTS, AND ITS HOPES. 

By GEO. ROBERTSON. L.L D 



At a meeting of the American party of the city of Lexing- 
ton and county of Fayette, Ky., on the 2d of August, 1855, 
for ratifying the platform adopted by a national convention 
at Philadelphia in June last — George Robertson being chosen 
President, Thomas H. Clay and Michael B. Johnson Vice 
Presidents, and J. C. Hogan Secretary — the following preamble 
and resolution, offered by the President, were unanimously 
adopted after the close of the following speech delivered by 
him in vindication and illustration of the principles and ob- 
jects of the American party. 



To secure mental independence and moral light, and there- 
by exalt their race, our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, as pioneers 
and martyrs in the cause of Christian civilization in the 
tern world, fixed their hopes and their homes in the wilds 
of North America. And to establish a model government, 
founded on equal civil and religious rights, and to be sus- 
tained by the reason and virtue of enlightened freemen, was 
the object and the hope of our Declaration of Independence 
in 1770. and of the adoption, in 1788, of the Constitution of 
the United States, ai the best guardian of national union, 
liberty and peace. Such was the mission of our American 
fathers ; and such is their legacy to their descendants — to en- 
joy, to improve, and to transmit. 

It must be the interest, as well as the duty, of every citizen 
to uphold a supreme law and maintain, in harmony and 
health, a political union of the people of all the States con- 

1 



2 

ceived in such unequaled human wisdom and consecrated 
by such glorious memories and cheering hopes. Consequent- 
ly, as popular intelligence and political morality are the 
essential elements of a just and stable Democracy, every 
American patriot should resist all other elements of human 
power inconsistent with the prevalence of reason, social 
progress, or a wholesome and enlightened love of our coun- 
try and its organic institutions. And, as harmony and confi- 
dence are indispensable to the peace and long life of the 
Union, all good citizens ought to strive to stifle every antag- 
onist passion, subdue every disturbing force, and counteract 
every distracting influence. 

The seeds of these destructive agents are already scattered 
over the land by reckless hands, and, unless blasted in the germ 
or chilled in the bud, this noxious fruit may soon degrade or 
ruin the most hopeful organism on earth. The tide of for- 
eign immigration, always too copious, has, for the last decade, 
increased so rapidly as to authorize the apprehension that, 
unless promptly checked, it will swell to such a flood as might, 
before the close of this century, overwhelm our country with 
that class of people least conversant with our language, 
most ignorant of our law r s, least attached to our soil, and 
most governed by prejudice and passion ; and, consequently, 
less qualified than any other class for governing others or 
themselves. Large portions of them have been taught to 
idolize the Pope of Rome as an incarnate God — many are 
paupers, and not a few convicted felons, cast off by regal and 
Papal concert, to relieve the old world and feed on the vitals 
of the new. Most of the great mass — trained in the unre- 
publican habit of passive obedience and non-resistance to 
a foreign Hierarch who claims the right to think for them, 
are unsafe depositaries of political power in a Republic, 
This tumor has already become, by its unity and magnitude, 
so formidable as often to derange the healthy action of the 
body politic. It breeds demagogues, and banishes statesmen — 
it corrupts the ballot box, and is thus sapping the foundations 
of the Constitution. Such foreigners are usurping the reins 
of our government, by holding, as they may when adopted 
as citizens, the balance of power. Hence selfish aspirants 
court them by a servile subservience to their sensual appe- 
tites, their lawless instincts, and thoughtless prejudices — and 
thus they are generally enlisted as an army of Janisaries, 
against American conservatism and conservative Americans. 
And hence, chiefly, our legislative councils are degenerating — 
politicians are becoming unworthy and faithless — places of 
high trust are degraded ; office, instead of seeking, as in the 
purer days of Washington, the proper incumbent, is sought 



3 

after by the incompetent, and but too often obtained by dia- 
honorabl \nd even now. though our country 

abounds in various talent* of b very high order, yet they are 
not often in the public service ; and we must all feel humilia- 
tion and Miami at the fact thai our places of national trust, 
from tin highest to the Lowest, at home and abroad, are not 
filled bj the noble claa of men who graced them in the 
morning freshn< it government, Patronage is per- 

verted t.» selfish ends, and is thus made to operate as an in- 
depeiulent power. Foreign influence, foreign policy, and 
foreign men are Bupplanting American influence, American 
policy, and American men. Factions disturb the public peace 
and distract the public councils. A coalition of fanatics and 
politicians in the North — backed by J /ndation, and for- 

power, regal and Papal — and, exasperated by the repeal 
of the Missouri Compromise, through the influence of the present 
Federal Administration — seem determined to /^-agitate slavery 
in every form in which it had ever been agitated before the 
memorable compromise of 1850 — and, equally forgetful of 
the past and regardless of the future, they denounce an un- 
compromising crusade against a domestic institution legalized 
by the local laws in nearly one-half of the States of the 
Union and recognized by the constitution of the United States. 
This belligerent class of our fellow-countrymen feel encour- 
aged even to resist the enforcement of the fugitive slave 
law, by a late recognition by the party now in power, of the 
right of a State to decide/or itself and finally, on the consti- 
tutionality of any act of Congress ; and there may therefore 
be danger that some of the non-slaveholding States will as- 
sume to "nullify" thai law: The elements of disunion and its 
advocates also are increasing in number and growing in strength 
with * fearful progression ,• our blessed Union has thus reached 
an unexampled crisis, which maj Boon li\ it- destiny, and 
decide whether United Americans shall vu\<- United America. 
The old Whii( and Democratic parties, each unable or un- 
willing to , responsibility of resisting, have rather 
encouraged, by their reckless antagonism, the progress of 
pestilence that now invade- our institution- and threatens 
desolation. 

There!'" Guardian Genius of America calls on even- 

true and grateful -on of such a mother, to break the rusty 
ties of nominal and fruitless partyism, and to unite in a devoted 
band of patriotic Americans in rescm and restore their own native 
country. 

The invocation has b< d and obeyed with alacrity 

by hosts of self-sacrificing patriots of different parties in every 

te and Territory in the Union— good and prudent men 



who value substance more than shadow, and love their 
country, with all its traditions and prospects, more than a 
barren party or an empty party name. All such citizens, of what- 
ever denomination, may cordially concur in the principles and 
consistently co-operate in the objects of the American brother- 
hood in vindication of their birth rights : 

1 . To establish a pure and elevated nationality thoroughly 
American, and undisturbed by sectional politics or religious 
sects. 

2. To repress the immigration of paupers and felons — and 
to proclaim by law to all other classes of future immigrants : 
" You may come to live, but not to rule. 1 ' 

3. To tolerate and encourage perfect liberty of conscience 
— to enable every citizen to read the American Bible and expound 
it for himself without pinning a blind faith or a servile mind on any 
marts sleeve — to leave religion to itself as a personal concern — and 
emancipate the consciences of American citizens from Papal 
tyranny — and thus to secure the prevalence of a simple, in- 
dependent and national Christianity unknown elsewhere, and 
therefore peculiarly and eminently American. 

4. To keep church and State asunder — to vote against no good 
man solely on account of his religious faith if his practice 
be upright and consistent with social purity and decorum — 
but to withhold suffrage from any man who, as an exercise of 
religious faith or otherwise, submits his conscience or his 
judgment to the will of any human power claiming to be the 
exclusive representative of God on earth or an infallible ex- 
pounder of his will, or who feels any civil allegiance higher 
than that which he owes to the Constitution of the United 
States of America. 

5. To inspire a sacred veneration for that Constitution — to 
encourage mutual forbearance between the general and 
State governments in respect to all doubtful rights and powers, 
and to enlighten the popular mind, inculcate respectful sub- 
mission to law and especially to the-Constitution of the Union, 
the supreme law, as expounded by the organic judgment of the 
people of the United States. 

6. To guard the elective franchise from corruption and 
abuse in any form. 

7. To stay and forever silence, as far as possible, any agi- 
tation of the question of slavery elsewhere than in and by 
the authority of the States or Territories where it exists or 
may hereafter exist, and to maintain a faithful neutrality in 
the internal concerns of other nations. 

8. To resist all such abuse of executive patronage as tends 
to favoritism on the one hand or to the impairment of mental 
independence on the other. 



9. To make talents, good character, and faithful service 
the only passports to the public trusts, and the only titles to 
the honors of the Republic. 

10 that, in nl! n which national trust3 are 

confided to the general government without concurrent power 
in the States, the trustee shall fully, faithfully, and prudently 
fulfill the beneficial objects of the grant, in modes most agree- 
able to a majority of the constituent beneficiaries. 

This we consider an outline of the normal creed of the 
Anglo-American Union. These principles and objects har- 
monize in spirit and in substance with the American platform 
adopted by a convention of the American party, last June, in 
Philadelphia. They constitute the essence of our political 
Decalogue, and we consider each and all of them American 
birthrights which no true American will ever barter away for 
a mess of pottage. 

The members of the home party — preferring union and 
liberty, and national renown to the ephemeral triumphs of 
ambitious party, forgetting the fugitive conflicts of the past, 
and looking only to their common country's welfare — have 
united, hand to hand and heart to heart, in a solemn league and 
covenant to " Know-Nothing" inconsistent with the principles 
and aims of their fraternal union, and to co-operate faith- 
fully, prudently, andperseveringly in all constitutional means 
for securing triumph and permanent success, in defiance of 
the combined forces of the opposing "foreign party" Many 
citizens of this venerable county of Fayette and of this an- 
cient city of Lexington, of all denominations, have joined 
this devoted band of patriots — and all of us assembled here 
to consider the American platform, are of them and with them 
— now and henceforth, to the death. 

Whereupon, approving, as we do, in purpose and in prin- 
ciple, we hereby ratify the platform adopted at Philadelphia 
for the American party, and will, each and all, support its 
objects and defend its principles as long as the Star Spangled 
Banner shall wave, as an emblem of free and United America. 



SPEECH 



American Brother*. 

\< Kentucky freemen. w« are now here to make procia- 
ion of our Americao principles, and testify, before the 
world, our adhesion to diem. A national convention, repre- 
senting every State and Territory in the Union, having in 
June last adopted a platform on which every patriotic citizen 
may safely stand, we have come together to consider, and if 
we approve, to ratify and pledge our faith, as an American 
Brotherhood, to uphold it as the palladium of American birth- 
rights. 

In such a presence it becomes my allotted duty to present 
an outline of the objects and an exposition of the principles 
of the American party. The proprieties of the occasion will 
therefore restrict our discourse to elucidation, rather than dis- 
cussion, and to the heads of an argument instead of full ar- 
gument itself, on a theme more copious and interesting than 
any which agitates the public mind. Preparatory to such a 
programme, it may be proper to take some preliminary notice 
of objections, which, without affecting any of our principles, 
are, nevertheless, with inconsiderate passion, urged against 
our American organization, which, like the missioned sceptre 
of Aaron, may swallow up all the spurious rods of political 
jugglers, and like the simple wand in the hands of Moses, 
would make the living water gush through the reluctant rock ; 
to refresh and unite discordant brethren, save them from for- 
eign bondage, and secure to them and their descendants the 
government and enjoyment of their own native land of pro- 
mise. 

This class of formal objections may be reduced to the four 
following: 

1st. Imputed secrecy. There is no secrecy in any dis- 
paraging, offensive, or disquieting sense. The principles and 
aims of the organization were never concealed, and are all 
now as open and radiant as sunshine. Meetings and coun- 
have been, and may prudently continue to be, private 
and exclusive — to avoid annoyance and disturbances — never 
to conceal any sinister, false, or dishonorable purpose or act. 
In the initial stage of the party, its members were required 
not to disclose, to an inquisitorial and censorious world, the 
membership of each other, because, such disclosures might 
subject unoffending persons to the denunciation and pro- 
scription of the rulers of the parties they had left, to the 
slanders of subsidized presses, and possibly to mob violence ; 



8 

and because also the apprehension of such consequences 
might deter many honest, but isolated and unpatronised men, 
from leaving their old party. While, however, no member 
had a right to subject another to such personal peril without 
his consent, every one might, on his own responsibility, ac- 
knowledge his own membership. I never denied mine. But 
now, the infant party feeling strong enough in moral power 
to defend itself and maintain the rights and the honor of all 
its members, that first defensive injunction is taken off, and 
they are all as knowable, as free, and as self-confident as 
those who constitute any other party. And the only privacy 
in their councils and conventional phrases and emblems, is 
neither objectionable in itself nor peculiar to 'the American 
party. The Whig and Democratic parties have had their 
secret meetings and movements — our diplomacy is sealed 
with secrecy — the affiliated Democratic clubs of revolutionary 
France and of post-revolutionary America, held secret meet- 
ings and corresponded secretly — the councils of Masonry are 
secret — our revolutionary Congresses sat with closed doors, 
and independence was thus concerted, debated, first declared, 
and finally achieved — the Cincinnati, headed by Washington, 
was a secret society of revolutionary patriots — the Senate of the 
United States, even yet, deliberates on treaties and nomina- 
tions with closed doors, and under a solemn injunction of 
secrecy : and in most of these instances secrecy was proper 
and useful, and for no reason or purpose which would not 
make all the privacy of the American party proper and use- 
ful. This objection — the offspring sometimes of ignorance 
and sometimes of unjust design — evaporates into harmless 
gas; and why has it never been made against the subterra- 
nean Sag-Nichts, whose principles, if they have any. are all 
concealed? 

2d. The party is bound by sacrilegious and awful oaths. 
This, too, is explosive gas. In the legal or punitory sense we 
take no oath. Honor is the only sanction of any asseveration 
by a member of our party. This* is no otherwise an oath, 
nor more obligatory than the solemn appeal made by the 
Congress of '76, when its members pledged their lives, their 
fortunes, and their sacred honor in support of the Declaration 
of Independence — nor than the impressive appeal made 
^before GOD and the world?* by the Continental Congress, of 
1775, when, in their manifesto after the battles of Lexington 
and of Bunkers Hill, they asseverated as follows: 

"Honor, justice and humanity forbid us tamely to surren- 
der that freedom which we received from our gallant ances- 
tors and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive 
from us. Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. With 



hearts fortified with these animating reflections we most sol- 
emnlv, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the ut- 
most energy of those p< Inch our beneficent Creator 
hath graciously bestowed upon us. the arms we have been 
compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of 
every hazard, with unabating firmness ami perseverance em- 
ploy for the preservation of our liberties — being of one mind, 
resolved to die freemen rather than live slaves. In our native 
land, in defense of the freedom that is our birthright — for the 
protection of our property acquired solely by the honest in- 
dustry of our forefathers and ourselves, we have taken up 
arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease 
on the part of the aggressors, and danger of their being re- 
newed shall be removed — and not before." 

So swear we, of the American party, in our manifesto 
against similar perils and wrongs at home — and so have we 
sworn in our Declaration of Native American Independence. 
Here is our oath to defend the Union — the noble fruit of the 
first declaration by our fathers — and the great object of our 
second declaration : 

OBLIGATION. 

You and each of you of your own free will and accord, in the presence of Al- 
mighty God and these witnesses, with your hands joined in token of that fraternal 
affection which should ever bind together the States of this Union— forming a ring, 
in token of your determination that, so far a3 your efforts can avail, this Union 
shall have no end ; that you do hereby solemnly declare your devotion to the 
Union of these States ; that in the discharge of duties as American citizens you 
will uphold, maintain, and defend it; that you will discourage and discountenance 
any and every attempt, coming from any and every quarter, which you believe 
to be designed or calculated to destroy or subvert it, or to weaken its bonds ; and 
that you will use your influence, so far as in your power, in endeavoring to procure 
an amicable and equitable adjustment of all political discontents or differences, 
which may threaten its injury or overthrow. 

You further promise and swear, (or affirm,; that you will not vote for any one 
to fill any office of honor, profit, or trust, of a political character, whom you "know 
or believe to be in favor of a dissolution of the Union of these States, or who is 
endeavoring to produce that result ; that you will vote for and support for all po- 
litical offices, third or Union degree members of this Order in preference to all 
others ; that if it may be done consistently with the constitution and laws of the 
land, you will, when elected or appointed to any official station which may confer 
on you the power to do so, remove from office or place all persons whom you know 
or believe to be in favor of a dissolution of the Union, or endeavoring to produce 
that result, and that you will in no case appoint such persons to any political office 
or place whatever. All this you promise and swear (or affirm) upon your honor 
as American citizens and friends of the American Union, to sustain and abide by 
without any hesitation or mental reservation whatever. You will promise and 
swear ^or affirm} that this and all other obligations which you have previously 
taken in this order, shall ever be kept sacred and inviolate. To all this you pledgs 
your lives, your fortunes, and your sacred honors. So help you God and keep you 
steadfast . 

Is this sacrilegious [a it awful? Xot surely to any friend 
of the Union — certainly not to any true-hearted American, 
native or adopted. But there may be, among us, Pharisees 
who are tenacious of the form, but regardless of the sub- 

2 



10 

Btance, whose deceitful hearts throb with disunion, while their 
sanctimonious lips mechanically utter Union — and who either 
blindly neglect, or treacherously oppose the means necessary 
for preserving that bond of peace without which liberty 
would be anarchy, and independence a shadow. It would 
be well if such men could be compelled to swallow this, our 
impious oath, every day. To such only can it be nauseous 
medicine. But we also make a pledge that we will never, as 
long as we continue members, vote for an anti-American 
against a candidate nominated and supported as the choice 
of our own party. We intend to practice what we preach — 
"principles, not men" This all parties profess — and it i3 what 
every honest and consistent partizan docs. The American 
who, under the dominion of personal motives, would exert 
his influence to defeat the selected champion of his own prin- 
ciples with an open enemy of his party and his principles, 
is not a man of principle, and would, under the like false guide, 
desert any cause. Our pledge will not hold such a recreant. 
It allows him to withdraw when he becomes unwilling to ful- 
fill his plighted faith ; it requires him to do only what he ought 
to do, and that, which, if a true man, he would do without 
it. If this be an oath, it is an oath to be honest. Fight not 
against your household — if you cannot serve it, quit, and then, 
but not before, fight against it. This is the "awful" pledge. 
3d. The American is a heterogeneous party — composed of 
renegades from other parties. This objection is ludicrous. 
Ours is a homogeneous party, and the only one which can 
have any hope of harmonizing the discordant elements of all 
other parties and of uniting the reason and patriotism of the 
Union against the passions of local, personal, and political fac- 
tions which disturb its peace and threaten its dismemberment. 
Our party is a crystalization of the purer elements of other 
parties, too gross and incongruous for true Americanism : it 
is, like the soul escaping from the dying body, an elimination 
from the decaying bodies of old and hopeless parties, of the 
vital principles of American Liberty and Union. The prin- 
ciples of our party are simple, comprehensive, and American 
without alloy — such as every American heart must approve, 
every American head may adopt, and every American hand 
defend — and such, we think, as every true American citizen 
will finally sanction and unitedly uphold against all opposing 
powers. The party which stands on such a platform is far 
from being either heterogeneous or transient. It is, we be- 
lieve, the only consistent, and the most congenial party in the 
land ; and we hope that it will long survive every other and 
antagonist party. If it shall not outlive ail the fragmentary 
factions and all the conglomerate parties of the day, we ap- 



11 

prehend that, whenever it falls, the Union will fall with it, 
and that the sun of American Independence may go down in 
blood. It is composed altogether of native Americans — hon- 
orable and patriotic men of all rid conditions, from 
the humblest to the most exalted— combining, in every honest 
walk, a large share of the p orality, patriotism, indus- 
try, wealth, and talents, which distinguish our country. And, 
although but an infant yet in its cradle, it lias more friends 
and more innate power than cither the Whig or the Demo- 
cratic part}, in itself', ever had or ever will have. Except on 
one question, it is, almost unanimous; and, on that, it is more 
harmoniou- than an) other party claiming to be national ; 
and it has probably even now a national majority on that 
I delicate and impracticable of all questions which have 
ever agitated our country or its councils. No other party can 
claim as much of unity in principle, and purpose, or is so 
hopeful of national good. 

4th. The last and lamest objection urged against our or- 
ganization i* that it is not national? What party was ever 
more national in its spirit, or in its composition? In what 
party was a greater variety of personal predilections and 
local sympathies offered up on the altar of American nation- 
ality? Its great aim io to merge all sectionalism in a com- 
prehensive American feeling and policy. Its only antagonist 
is a coalition party, composed of the skeleton of the Demo- 
cratic tarty, a very small fragment of the Whig party, all the 
leaders and organs of the Abolition party, all the inferior 
classes of foreigners, Papists and the Pope, the ultra dis- 
unioni^N. and a venal army of parasites who will stick to 
any party which feeds best. And this Hotch-Pot mass, this 
modern BABEL is national in only one object — the destruc- 
tion of the American party — only because it is altogether 
national, and will, by its success, silence every discordant 
note of selfish passion and deprive anti-national combinations 
of mischievous power. Such is our multiform opponent — 
Protean in form, discordant in principle, lifeless in nationality, 
and nameless, unless it be called the "Porcign Farty" — the 
only name which will identify the mass or apply to any one 
quality of all its separate parts, no one of which is thorough- 
ly national in its constitution, its policy, or its acts. Is the 
Union national? Is the purification of the ballot-box na- 
tional? Is the depression of demagogues, and the patronage 
of merit national? Is the suppression of all sectional agita- 
tion national? Is opposition to all foreign influence national? 
Is liberty of conscience and a separation of church and State 
national? Then the American party, organized for effecting 
all these ends and none inconsistent with them, \b pre-eminent. 



12 

ly a national party, and the only national party. No party can 
be either consistent, permanent, or national, unless sound 
constitutional principles constitute the foundation of its po- 
litical platform. The American is the only party which has 
any such basis. Nullifiers, and Secessionists, and Abolition- 
ists, and the lower stratum of foreigners — all stand on federal, 
anti-Union quick sands. Their foundation, therefore, is 
neither sound nor national. The Baltimore platform of the 
Democratic party rests on the same destructive foundation ; 
for it recognizes the assumed constitutional right of a majority 
of the people of a single State, to overrule the people of the 
United States on national questions involving the Union and 
affecting the common interests of the people of all the States. 
Many former members of that party, repudiating that fatal 
heresy, have, therefore, joined the American party; and all, 
who concur with them on that radical principle, must, to be 
consistent, soon follow their example. And consequently 
the carcass that may remain, will be fundamentally anti-na- 
tional, and, united with the concurrent factions, it will be as life- 
less as a mummy for all the vital concerns of the Union, and as 
poisonous as the Upas of Java. It strikes at the very tap-root of 
American nationality. Nor is it, North or South, or anywhere 
either united or national, on any great interest of the Union — 
slavery, tariff, internal improvement, or legislative, executive, 
or judicial power. 

To nationalize and preserve the Union by maintaining the 
fundamental principles of the American Constitution and of 
sound American policy, is the first object, and will be the last 
hope of the American party. The supremacy of that na- 
tional law and of its interpretation by the organic judgment 
of the American nation, is the hull of its National Argo — rea- 
son its magnet — the Union its polar star — and Washington its 
Palinurus. Like its prototype of olden times, it may be 
patched and renovated whenever its preservation may re- 
quire: But the American party have resolved that, as long 
as they can save it, it shall never go down or lose its glo- 
rious identity. "The Union — it must, and shall be preserv- 
ed." This is the echo of our party — constitutional union is 
its centre — constitutional liberty its circumference. 

But principle is much more important than form. The prin- 
ciples of the American party, therefore, constitute the subject 
of gravest consideration. 

As in the physical and animal economy there are certain 
organic laws essential to the preservation and healthy de- 
velopment of each distinct species, so equally in nations and 
governments, there are social and political principles peculiar 
to each, and indispensable to its security and upward pro- 



13 

grew. Our country is wonderfully peculiar — in its origin — 
in its history- -in its population — in ita social and civil organ- 
izations — in its religion — in its civilization — and in its mis- 
sion and its destiny. The vision li a^ rational as it is en- 
nobling that, in the wisdom of a benignant Providence, our 
America u to be the theatre of the highest civilization and 
the mobt perfect moral development of our race ; and, there- 
fore, we should contemplate it a the chosen pioneer of civil 
and religious liberty and light, and, in this respect, the exem- 
plar of the whole earth. Its congenial principles mu3t, con- 
sequently, be pre-eminently peculiar, and the responsibilities 
of its citizens be correspondent]}- great. The principles con- 
secrated by our forefathers, and stereotyped in our organic 
institutions, are not only signally peculiar, but admirably con- 
genial with the ends of our eventful mission. But degenerate 
politicians, and reckless party conflicts have so long enlisted 
the popular passions against the deliberate and patriotic rea- 
son, as fearfully to confound pure principle with selfish policy, 
and thus greatly impair the efficacy and restrict the knowl- 
edge of the fundamental elements of all our institutions. 
social and civil. Wise and patriotic men of all denomina- 
tions have, for some years past, observed this political degen- 
eracy and popular apostacy. with humiliation and anxious 
foreboding. They feel that American institutions have been 
brought to a chrysalis state, and they are alarmed at the pros- 
pect of a monstrous transition. As principles are immutable 
Sindpolicy changeable, honest and intelligent parties will often 
difTer on questions of fugitive policy : but can have no pa- 
triotic excuse for differing a-> to eternal principles. And, 
whenever party policy encroaches on principle, every patriot 
should abandon the party or the policy, and, in defiance of 
threatened proscription, go with even a forlorn hope, in 
united efforts to maintain the principle inviolate and supreme. 
Such is the felt duty and such the sole purpose of those who 
constitute the American party. Xobly preferring their coun- 
try's glory to the bubbling and but too often ignoble triumphs 
of transient parties, they have, patriotically, united together 
for the rescue and firm establishment of the normal elements 
of American nationality, and have resolved that, until their 
object shall have been achieved, they will "Know-Nothing" 
else of mere policy, which would interfere with or obstruct 
their common efforts in their common cause. Let our adver- 
saries scrutinize our platform, and then, with their hands on 
their hearts, deny, if they can, that it is patriotic, conse: 
tive, and wholly American. Our history consecrates all its 
principles. They were the principles for which our Pilgrim 
Fathers encountered persecution in the old. and exile in our 



14 

new world — they were the principles of our revolutionary 
patriots, who achieved our national independence — they were 
the principles of the venerated American statesmen who es- 
tablished our liberty and cemented our Union by adopting 
our American constitution — they were eminently the princi- 
ples of Washington, as illustrated by the official life and com- 
mended to his countrymen by the farewell address of the 
Father of his Country. They are therefore ours. They are 
the principles also of every true American Whig and of every 
true American Democrat. And any party which, in doctrine 
renounces or, in practice, violates any one of them, will soon 
degenerate into a pestilent faction, and will never deserve the 
confidence or countenance of any American patriot. 

The best cause on earth may be degraded by the passions 
and infirmities of its advocates. The alloy of human liberty 
is party spirit, which has ever been the besetting sin of Re- 
ligion and Politics, of Churches and Commonwealths. Chris- 
tians concur in ail the essential elements of Christianity : but 
the selfishness and bigotry of partyism pervert benevolence, 
retard the progress of piety, and distract, instead of harmon- 
izing, Christendom. These, however, are only spots on the 
sun, which, though they mar his disk and obscure his native 
brightness, do not altogether extinguish his light, which, be- 
ing heaven born, is inextinguishable by the folly or fury of 
men. But the discord and belligerence of political parties 
not only dim but often totally eclipse the star of liberty. If 
all Christians, in the plentitude of brotherly love, would 
cease their warfare about non-essential dogmas and disturb- 
ing shadows, and, surrendering all sectarian pride and preju- 
dice, would cordially unite on vital principles, under the holy 
banner of the Cross, they would disarm infidelity of its most 
fatal weapon, and soon evangelize the world. And yet an 
Armenian might be an Armenian still — a Calvanist a Calvan- 
ist still — and a Baptist a Baptist still — and all of them would 
be better Christians. In like manner, if the political parties 
which unwisely distract our peace and jeopard our security — 
throwing aside names and selfishness and false pride — would 
magnanimously unite in a great American party on principles 
essentially American, and in which all American patriots 
must concur, America would soon become the favored and 
assured land of Religion and Law, of Liberty and Peace. 
And yet a Whig might still be a Whig — and a Democrat 
might still be a Democrat — and a better Democrat than ever 
before. All would then be Patriots — all Americans — with 
undivided heart, and head, and hands. But all may still be 
Whigs or Democrats as to any policy not interfering with their 
American platform or the success of its principles. Such is 



16 

our young American party. Whigs and Democrats have 
joined it with equal alacrity; and it is said that a majority of 
the delegates to the late National Convention in Philadelphia 
were from the Democratic party. 

Since 1822, when European Monarchy and Papacy coa- 
lesced in at Verona for extirpating the princi- 
ple of popular sovereignty and undermining Republicanism, 
foreign immigration of all classes, but chiefly Romanists of 
the most ignorant class, has been rapidly increasing until last 
year, when a stupendous wave of more than half a million of 
foreigners — poor and illiterate, ignorant of our language and 
our laws, and alien in manners and religion — burst on the 
bosom of our country in one annual tide. And we have often 
heard and have cause to apprehend that, in plethoric Europe, 
Priests and Monarchists, by an organized system of disgorge- 
ment, are, from year to year, insiduously casting on our shores 
their effete population with all its superstition, pauperism, and 
crime. Our Republican institutions are contagious. The 
light of their example has already dawned on the social 
gloom of the old world, and exposed to Popedom and Dy- 
nasty. Monarchy and Hierarchy, the prophetic hand-writing 
of the Almighty on their massive walls. To put out that light 
is the only hope of those superannuated powers. And, for this un- 
righteous purpose, they have begun, with all the fanaticism 
of Peter the Hermit, to preach a crusade against a domestic 
institution of our South, and to throw on us the incubus of a 
crude mass of Roman Catholic foreigners, which already dis- 
turbs and may soon paralyze our vital energies as a free and 
independent nation. This morbid excrescence on our body 
politic deranges its healthy action, and is. even now, felt as a 
ruling power in its functional economy. Antagonist parties 
bid for and bow to it; the party that gains it is almost cure 
to rule : and that, through which a dominant party prepon- 
derates, is the ruling power \ even though it might be ever so 
insignificant and powerless by itself. Its corrupting influence 
is already degrading our national character and transforming 
our American nationality — prostituting the ballot-box, pei- 
verting patronage, adulterating public opinion, feeding fac- 
tion, and driving to anarchy and dissolution. Americans 
must resist it — and the time to overcome it is now, or never. 

The Bible is the only parent of the highest civilization, and 
the only tardian of liberty. And wherever Christianity 

prevails in its native purity and simplicity, equality and indepen- 
dence must also prevail. Pap., -aming infallibility in i's 
construction of the Bible, supremacy over Church and State, 
authority to think for the masses, and power to grant to sin 
indulgence and dispensation, and to redeem sinners from 



16 

punishment and secure to them everlasting peace — ruled 
Christendom for centuries, until the Protestants commenced 
the reformation early in the 16th century. Salvation by faith 
in the Bible, not in flesh and blood— freedom of conscience and of 
judgment, and personal responsibility for the proper exercise of tlie 
conscience and the mind, constitute the vital principle of Protes- 
tantism. And this principle is the germ of civil, as well as 
of religious liberty. It makes men think for themselves, and 
emboldens them to act as they think. Men of that mould 
will be free in civil as well as in religious opinion. And 
wherever such religious liberty has gone, civil liberty has always fol- 
lowed in its icakc. The antipodal doctrine of the Papacy has 
always been as incompatible with civil as with religious liber- 
ty— and ever must be destructive of both. The Protestant prin- 
ciple, planted by banished pilgrims in our virgin soil, has pro- 
duced abundant fruit in American civilization and liberty. 
And to preserve that fruit we must cultivate and defend that 
fructifying principle of human progress and social ameliora- 
tion. Pure Catholicity is Christian charity, tolerant and uni- 
versal. Every good Christian is therefore Catholic. In the 
sterling sense, unadulterated Christianity is Catholic, and the 
American Constitution is emphatically Catholic. But neither 
of them is, in any degree, Papal or Roman. Neither of them 
recognizes either the temporal or the spiritual dominion of the 
Pope of Rome, nor can trust that form of religion that does — 
and which is therefore called Roman. A Catholic, then, is one 
thing, and a Roman Catholic is an essentially different thing. 
In both religion and politics, pure Catholicism and Romanism 
are as distinct and remote from each other as the Antipodes. 
The one is slavery, the other liberty, of the reason and the con- 
science — the one is despotic and the other democratic. And, 
consequently, one is poison to popular institutions , and the other is 
their necessary aliment. We shall not pause to discuss the ir- 
relevant question whether the Vatican now claims temporal 
power. We only recite an historic truth when we say that 
the Pontificate never yet failed to exercise such power, when- 
ever and wherever it had the moral or the physical means of doing 
it effectually, and also that, even now, wherever it prevails, iw 
form of Protestant worship is tolerated. And we will add, as 
our individual opinion, that, whenever it can exercise the 
power, it will rule States as well as consciences, and will, in 
substance if not in form, re-establish the Inquisition and the 
Auto-de-Fae. But, as reason and conscience constitute the man, 
the christian, and the citizen — the spiritual sovereignty of the Pope 
will alone make men automatons and slaves, and thus brutalize God's 
image on earth. And the Pope's spiritual supremacy over Ro- 
man Catholics cannot be candidly denied. 



17 

lr is believed that large portions of immigrants to this 
country from Europe are Roman Catholics, and we know that 
most of them are ignorant, unlettered, and unreasoning. 
We know al.-o that Utah is ruled by foreign Mormons, and 
that California is in bobm danger of inundation by Pagans 
from China and the Pacific -Isles. Is our country in no danger 
from copious infusions of such a population^ Ought we to 
give such people the power to rule ua? Can it be possible 
that any enlighted citizen can think that it is either our duty 
or our interest to arm them with political power? Intelli- 
gence, guided by patriotism, should control the destinies of a 
Republic, and this is the American theory. Can we expect 
that the grade of the American mind will be exalted, or the 
quality of American patriotism improved by the accession of 
any such foreign elements? We, of the American party, 
think not. By timely and effectual means, to save our coun- 
try from impending revolution in its social, civil, and religious 
institutions from this threatening quarter, is the first and lead- 
ing object of our league as American brothers. And to aid 
the accomplishment of this patriotic and necessary end, we 
propose the following means: 1st. The purification of the 
ballot-box as far as possible, by discountenancing all illegal 
votes, by rebuking all corrupting influences and appliances 
in money or otherwise, by candidates or their friends, and by 
opposing demagogues and all their artifices and solicitations. 
2d. The exclusion of all foreign paupers and criminals who 
may hereafter be imported to our shores. 3d. A repeal of 
our naturalization laws — for, though our Platform is repeal 
or essential modification, yet. believing that every motive for 
an extension of probation would, with equal force, oppose 
any naturalization otherwise than as a birth-right of the 
American born, we incline to advocate a total abrogation of 
the entire system of artificial naturalization by mere law. 
And 4th. A determination never to vote for or approve the 
appointment of a "Roman Catholic" to fill any station of 
public trust. To the 1st and 2d, we have heard no objection, 
although it may be quite probable that many street politicians 
and stump orators are strongly opposed to both, and espe- 
cially the first. The 3d and 4th are objects of much vehe- 
ment opposition and declamatory denunciation. 

The naturalization and the bankrupt powers stand in jux- 
taposition, and are conferred on Congress in the same terms. 
They are, therefore, correlatives, and neither of them is more 
mandatory than the other; each is evidently permissive only. 
Congress would therefore no more disregard any constitution- 
al injunction by never passing a naturalization law, than it 
would by never enacting a bankrupt law — nor by repealing 
3 



18 

all naturalization laws, than by repealing the bankrupt laws. 
The only question in each case, is one of public policy. 

And why should we desire to naturalize more of such for- 
eigners as the mass of future immigrants may be expected 
to be? And why, especially, should we invite them hither by 
offering to all sorts of them, the bonus of political power over our- 
selves? The power of the millions already made citizens, is 
sufficiently deteriorating to our national character, and peril 
ous to our national security If many more are let loose up- 
on us, foreignism will overwhelm nativeism ; the united votes 
of foreigners will overrule those of divided natives, which 
will count only as cyphers, and Americans by birth may soon 
find that they will be the only disfranchised class of citizens. 
Foreigners cannot be classified by law, so as to make any 
legal discrimination as to their naturalization. We must 
therefore naturalize all or none; and in this pregnant dilemma, 
Americans should say none, except in individual cases of pe- 
culiar merit. No foreigner has any right to complain of this 
— and no liberal foreigner of the best class would complain 
of it. It would deprive the masses of no privilege they ever 
enjoyed elsewhere. What right have they to expect more, 
when they come here, than the privilege of staying and en- 
joying our country and the protection of its free constitution 
and equal laws? That bountiful boon is far more than would 
ever have been permitted to them in their fatherland, and 
quite as much as their ancestral laws would suffer any 
American to enjoy there. By coming here, without the hope 
of political power, they might greatly improve their condi- 
tions and prospects, and would even still more improve those 
of their children, born here, and naturalized by their birth. 
Ought they not to feel grateful to us for such an asylum, gild- 
ed with such a future? And would not the claim also to rule 
us, be so impudent and vulgar as to prove that they ought not 
to be sovereigns anywhere? If, because we will not grant 
this privilege to the blind Giant, he shall choose to remain in 
his own native country, we would gain as much as he would 
certainly lose, by that election. But if, with full knowledge 
of our law, he shall come to enjoy our hospitality, surely he 
cannot complain because we will not adopt him into our fam- 
ily, and hold our own homes as his tenants at will. Nor is 
there any reason to apprehend that the multitudes, who would 
still gratefully come, would feel themselves a degraded caste, 
and would therefore be more pestilent here than in Europe, 
or than they would be here, with the privilege of suffrage. 
They would be much less pestilent — and incomparably more 
peaceful and useful — than they would ever be if we should 
unwisely grant to them privileges which we prudently with- 



19 

hold from our own Cultivated wives and daughters, and our own 
educated minor sons. />>// in any event, we are sure that we could 
rn them better than they would govern, or help to govern us. 
And, in this way only, can we hope to do it. This, therefore, 
will, as we hope, be the way of tin* American party. 

But we have been nuel by the puerile objection that a re- 
peal of the naturalization lawi could not effect our object, 
because the Stat extend the right of suffrage to unnat- 

uralized foreigners, and the Constitution of the United States 
adopts, as ti i members of Congress, in each State, 

the people of the State" who are, by the law of that State, 
the electors of the most numerous branch of its local Legis- 
lature. A sufficient answer to this objection is, that our prin- 
ciples and aims apply to the States as much as to the general 
government, and that the power which can reform the one 
may also, and will, reform the others. If we succeed, as we 
hope and expect, we will attend to this matter in the States 
which may need our help. But there is another answer. No 
State can naturalize a foreigner : that is a national power, 
which is, therefore — as conclusively decided — granted exclu- 
sively to Congress. Nor can a State make an unnaturalized 
foreigner one of its own citizens — because, for harmony and 
union, the Federal Constitution guarantees to the citizens of 
each State, "all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several 
States;" and if a State could make foreigners citizens, the 
object of the grant of the power to Congress exclusively would 
be frustrated, and the power itself annulled. If the right of 
suffrage can make a citizen, then, by extending that right to 
an unnaturalized foreigner, a State makes a citizen for every 
other State; and, so far, defeats a great purpose of the Fed- 
eral Constitution. And if this be so, it would prove that the 
extension was unconstitutional and void. But if the right of 
suffrage does not per se make a man a citizen, then, though 
a State may. for all its local purposes, allow others than citi- 
zens to vote, still such persons will not be of that class of 
electors contemplated by the Constitution. The language of 
the Constitution is, that "the people of the several States" 
may choose members of Congress. And it confines the elec- 
torship of members of Congress to such voters, that is, citi- 
zens of B ote for the State House of Representa- 
tives, and may not, therefore, include even all the citizens. 
"State" is apolitical aggregation, and has a technical import 
The people of a E lierefore, are those persons only who 
are constituent elements of the body politic, all of whom must 
necessarily be citizens of the State. Consequently, if a State 
give to the citizens of other States the right to go to its polls 
and vote at its local elections, it does not thereby make them 



20 

parts of itself— people of the State. And certainly, if this 
had not been the view of the framers of the Federal Consti- 
tution, they never would have given either the exclusive power 
of naturalization to Congress, or the right, to the people of 
the State, to elect its members — the whole purpose of each of 
which national provisions would be defeated by any other 
hypothesis. Wherefore, without intending to give more than 
a clue to the argument, we conclude that an unnaturalized 
foreigner in but not of a State, cannot constitutionally vote for 
a member of the Congress of the United States. 

But it has been argued, against the repeal of the natural- 
ization laws, that the States would then usurp the power to 
naturalize ; in other words, because Congress, seeing that a 
national power has become functus officio, and cannot be longer 
exercised wholesomely, therefore let it slumber; the States 
may unconstitutionally resume it, and attempt to make abor- 
tions by the C&sarean operation ! This cannot be elevated to 
the dignity of an argument. It is not even a "scare crow." 
But it shows what desperate men will do in a desperate cause: 
for what can indicate more desperation than the ridiculous 
plea, that Congress shall do wrong to prevent the possibility 
of the States trying to do worse? 

To vote for no foreigner or "Roma?i Catholic," is one of the 
pledges of the American party. So far as foreigners are con- 
cerned, I would have preferred some modification of our Plat- 
form. But it is impossible to frame any creed, religious or 
political, in all the details of which every honest and self- 
poised mind can fully concur. And therefore as, in my judg- 
ment, voting against a candidate because he is a foreigner, 
is no more inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution 
than voting against a man because he is a non-resident, and 
as I deem this a matter of comparative indifference, I shall, 
cheerfully and firmly, stand on the Platform, subject, as it is, 
to future modification according to developments hereafter. 

But, so far as I know, we all cordially approve the resolu- 
tion to vote for no Romanist. This we hold to be both consti- 
tutional and prudent. And we are yet unable to see a sem- 
blance of pretext for the charge, so often fulminated from the 
press and the stump, that this encroaches on the liberty of con- 
science, implies a religious test, and tends to an union of 
Church and State. As our interdict applies to all foreigners 
— whether religious or irreligious, Papal or Protestant — there 
can be no ground for charging us with being proscriptive of 
any form of faith in this portion of our Platform. And, con- 
fined, as it must therefore be, to native citizens, the charge is 
equally groundless, because the pledge does not include all 
Catholics, nor any Catholic merely as such, but is expressly 



21 

restricted to such only as arc "Roman Catholics." Such 13 the 
letter, and such is the spirit of our Platform. This is what 
we say, and what ice mean. If, then, there are native Catholics 
among us who deny the imputed infallibility of the Roman 
Pontiff and repudiate all allegiance to him, they arc not 
"Roman Catholics" — but, in contradistinction to that inter- 
dicted class, are, like the Episcopalians — Protestant Catholics; 
because they stand on the cardinal principles of the reforma- 
tion, and, equally with all Protestants, protest against the su- 
premacy of the Pope, either spiritual or temporal, and deny 
all his assumed vicarious power. Whatever, therefore, may 
be their distinctive peculiarities in Church organization and 
ritual, and in other forms and ceremonies, their minds and 
their consciences are as free from Papal dominion as the 
minds and consciences of Protestants proper are independent 
of ecclesiastical influence. All who thus feel and act, are 
such Catholics as Lord Baltimore — the Catholic founder of 
Maryland — and C/iarles Carroll, of Carrollton, the last survivor 
of the signers of the Declaration of American Independence. 
These pure Christians and illustrious patriots were Catholics 
— but they were American Catholics, not "Roman." And so 
are all native Catholics who, like them, submit their con- 
sciences to no human power, foreign or domestic, and ac- 
knowledge and feel, for all temporal purposes, a paramount 
allegiance to their country and its institutions. They are true 
and faithful citizens, and are trustworthy as such. But de- 
pendent, servile, Roman Catholics are unsafe depositories of 
political power in a Republic, where public opinion rules; 
and, to rule safely, must be enlightened and independent of all 
foreign power. 

The vital principle of our representative Democracies, na- 
tional and local, is mental tight and independence — intelligence, 
and liberty of conscience and freedom of opinion. Where 
these popular elements do not prevail, no Democracy can last. 
Without their prevalence it is, in any form, an uncongenial 
government, and must be an abortion. To preserve this viv- 
ifying and conservative principle of free and equal institu- 
tions, and to nourish its growth, the Constitution of the United 
States guarantees to every citizen, however humble, perfect 
liberty of conscience and opinion in Church and State ; and, 
to secure this great end, it forbids all religious tests. But its 
guarantee of religious faith is no stronger or more inviolable 
than its assurance of political faith. Each is equally pro- 
tected against disfranchisement or intrusion by law. Any cit- 
izen therefore has, alike, the constitutional right to enjoy, with- 
out disturbance, his own political and religious faith, and be a 
freeman in mind as well as in body. If he believe in aboli- 



22 

tionism or in nullification, he cannot be disturbed for his opin- 
io n) — n or, if he acknowledge the spiritual dominion of a Ro- 
man Pontiff, or believe in Atheism or in Pantheism, can he be 
punished or disfranchised by law for his faith. Nor does his 
faith in either politics or theology disqualify him for civil 
office, if the people think Jit to trust him with it. But although 
the Constitution wisely allows him to be a candidate, it does 
not ?nakc it my duty to vote for him, but, as wisely, leaves me as free 
in my vote as himself in his faith. Then, when I vote against 
an Abolitionist or Democrat on account of his political faith, 
I do not violate his constitutional privilege of liberty of opin- 
ion ; nor, for the same reason, when I vote against a Roman- 
ist or Mormon on account of his religious faith, do I violate 
his liberty of conscience— for my liberty to vote as I please is as 
important to the country ', and as much protected by the Constitution, 
as his liberty to think as he pleases. And as the same fundamen- 
tal law guarantees both civil and religious liberty, how can it 
be more inconsistent with its spirit to vote against a candidate 
on account of his religious faith, than it would be to vote 
against him on account of his political faith ? I vote against 
the candidate in each case because, in my opinion, he would 
not suit me best as my representative. And the same Con- 
stitution guarantees to me that opinion, and the unquestionable 
right to be governed by it in my vote in every case. To deny 
this would tend to encourage religious liberty to swallow up civil 
liberty. 

But it is not only our constitutional privilege to vote against 
a candidate because he is a Roman Catholic, but it is our duty 
to the Constitution to do it. The great object of the constitu- 
tional guarantee of liberty of conscience is frustrated, in his 
case, by his subjection of his own conscience as a slave to a 
foreign Pope, altogether human as himself, and, by which he 
not only violates the spirit of the Constitution, but puts him- 
self beyond its pale and refuses its protection. It says to 
him, you shall have the right to think freely for yourself, 
and it is your civic duty to do so as a good American citizen. 
If you will not do so, you are not such a citizen, and are only 
a fit subject of an autocracy. It says also to the Pope of 
Rome — you shall not control the consciences of American 
freemen ; our liberty and safety forbid all such foreign inter- 
ference. By assuming to do so, he therefore defies our organ- 
ic law, and attempts to defile the sanctuary of American in- 
dependence. And the American citizen who makes his con- 
cience the Pope's victim, is a voluntary vassal, and desecrates 
the American principle of mental independence. Consistently 
with the genius of our institutions, we could not vote for such 
a machine without a conscience or mind of his own. And by 



23 

voting against him, we do all we can to resist papal usurpation, 
and rescue American citizens from foreign tyranny, and emanci- 
pate and mixe their minds. How ridiculous therefore it 
is for a Romanist to complain that, by voting against him 
because he will not i his liberty of conscience, we violate that 
liberty! How ludicrous for him, who enslaves his own con- 
science, to prate about liberty ol conscience! And how much 
more ridiculous and ludicrous is it. not, for irreligious stump 
orators to denounce the American party for resolving to vote 
for no man who will not have a mind and a conscience of his 
own? 

We intend, as far as we can do it, to secure to every Amer- 
ican citizen perfect liberty of conscience in politics and reli- 
gion — and we will, if posible, liberate our country from all for- 
eign dominion, Papal or Regal. Thus only can American liberty 
be preserved , Church and State be kept asunder, and the free and 
independent spirit of the Constitution happily illustrated. The 
only effectual mode of preventing a pernicious union of 
Church and State, is that provided for by the Constitution — 
the exercise of universal liberty of conscience, unincumbered 
by any legal test of orthodoxy. We shall not be deterred, 
therefore, by the frantic cry of proscription of those who 
themselves renounce and proscribe liberty of conscience, and there- 
by mock the Constitution and prove tliemselves counterfeit American 
citizens — unworthy of public trust or confidence by true con- 
stitutional Americans, who will uphold the Constitution in 
its noble purpose of mental independence and American lib- 
erty. 

Power over the conscience is dominion over the will — and 
that, which controls the will, rules the man. The only differ- 
ence in this respect between temporal and spiritual power is, 
that one acts on the body and the other on the soul. Spirit- 
ual sovereignty is therefore more absolute and controling than tempo- 
ral authority. Our Constitution neither recognizes nor will 
tolerate any other spiritual sovereign than God — nor any temporal 
supremacy over itself. And we of the American party, de- 
nying that the Pope of Rome is superhuman, can trust with 
civil power no man who botes to him as a Divinity. And we think 
that the spirit of the Constitution enjoins this as our duty to 
ourselves, our country, and our posterity. 

Then, when wi gainst a "Roman Catholic,'* it is not 

because he i- a Catholic, but only because he is Roman: it it 
not for h ion, but lii> politics; not because he exercises, 

but because he will not exercise the liberty of conscience; nor 
because he acts as a freeman, but because he feels and acts 
like a slave to a foreign master, to whom he is bound more 
strongly than to his country or its constitution. Although our 



24 

wisely liberal constitution may guarantee even the Mormon 
faith, yet who among us would vote for a Mormon to repre- 
sent us? Not one. And why? Because his mind is enslav- 
ed, and his habits and principles are inconsistent with social 
order and subversive of civil liberty and security. And who 
would presume to say that such political opposition to him 
would be unconstitutional disfranchisement for the honest ex- 
ercise of liberty of conscience? And does not so much of the 
objection to him as is merely political, apply with equal and 
more obvious force to the "Roman Catholic," chained to the Pa- 
pal throne? 

There are, doubtless, some native Catholics in our country 
who are Roman, and not American, and who therefore have 
never voted, nor ever will, against the known wishes of their 
ruling Archbishop, installed as the Pope's sentinel in New 
York. Against all such anti- American and subservient tools, 
we should feel bound to vote. But there may be among us 
free and independent Catholics, American in sentiment, reli- 
gion, and politics. These we would embrace. And if any- 
one of them should be a candidate, and we should be satisfied 
that he is what he professes to be— -free in conscience, and de- 
voted to his country and its Constitution as the objects of his su- 
preme allegiance on earth — we would not vote against him be- 
cause his religion may not be ours, but should all vote for him 
as cheerfully as we should for a citizen of any other Christian 
denomination. All such Catholics, therefore, if there be such, 
instead of opposing our cause, should unite with us. It is 
peculiarly their interest that this cause should succeed ; be- 
cause its success would establish that Christian liberty and 
security which they profess to desire and claim as their birth- 
right ; and it is pre-eminently their duty to promote that suc- 
cess by their co-operation — because, thereby, they w 7 ould rid 
themselves of all suspicion of secret Romanism, and prove to 
the world their sincerity, their patriotism, and Christianity. 
Their opposition to us would go far to prove that they are 
Roman. If they claim liberty of conscience against Papal 
power, we would be the first to defend their right to enjoy, 
without question, their Catholic form of religion; and we 
would be the last to countenance any infringement of their 
perfect liberty. One of our great objects is to secure that lib- 
erty to all — and never to permit religion to become either ser- 
vile or political. When the minds and consciences of all are 
free, Church and State can never be united. Where, then, is 
our interference with religion or conscience ; where our con- 
junction of Church and State, so groundlessly imputed to us 
by many who are regardless of all religions? The charge is 
baseless, and must be the offspring of ignorance or fraudulent 



25 

-ii h who make it. and not we, who mayde- 

ilr religion b) dragging it on the arena of party poU 
Foreign influence and domeetice faction have proj 
uch an eztremit) as to bring the constitutional Union of 
the States, and the Constitution itself, to a trial of their 
, more severe and perilous, than an) to which the) 
er hitherto been subjected. To maintain the integrity 
of tin' one, and thesupn >f the other, lb the great and 

ultimate object of our American Organization: and this we 
hope to accomplish, not only by the measures alread) ex- 
. and chiefly , by cultivating the popular mind 
and morals — by diffusing a more accurate and extensive 
of our organic institution- — by inspiring an in- 
tensel) American feeling — by inculcating cheerful submission 
institutional authority, and peaceful acquiesence in all 
authoritative expositions of it, as provided for by the people 
who made the Constitution of the Union as the supreme law 
ry person in the Union — by encouraging a faithful 
fulfillment, by Congress, of all the national trusts confided to 
it by the people of the States, and by discouraging the ex- 
any Legislature, State or Federal, of any power 
which is reasonably questionable — by silencing all factions, 
and by repressing all sectional agitations which tend to weak- 
en the moral cement which binds the people and the States 
theras one nation, for all national purposes. 
Of all such agitations, the most disquieting are those of 
Abolitionism and Freesoilism, eaeh unreasonable in concep- 
fruitlesa in purpose, and mischievous in tendency — both 
cut with the compromising spirit of the Constitution, 
without which, the Union never would have been born, and 
»n perish — and each, by its agitation, destructive of 
nony, suicidal in its operation, and undoubtedly injurious 
to the black, as well as to the white race. 

On the Bubject of slavery 1 will here echo sentiments I ut- 

I in the Legislature of Kentucky in the year 1849 in a 

-i the repeal of the non-importation act of 1883: 

ii slavery in the North American Slates, Mr. R. had, 
■k with the eye of considerate philanthrophy and 
"uld rejoice to see all men. of every color and 
elime, equal in privileges and endowments, and well qualified for the peaceful en- 
jovment of civil, social, and religious liberty and light. But a wise and inscru- 
table Providence had otherwise ordained ; and no art or policy of man can ch i 

Whenever the black and white races of our species arc 
thrown together in th amunity, it had long been Ids opinion that it is 

better for both that the inferior should be in a state of subordination to that which, 
under all cii ;ie superior. The two races are immiscible. Amal- 

gamation would iting to the white race, and, in his judgment, incon- 

it with the laws of social welfare and the dignity and progress of the more 
improved portion of mankind. The two incongvu innot live together on 

terms of social or civil equalitv. 

4 



20 

"His conscience, continued Mr. R., had never, therefore, been disturbed by any 
morbid sentimentalism on the subject of slavery as it exists in Kentucky. ' And 
he could not feel that it is either impious or irrational to presume that the enalfti • •- 
ment in America of the superstitious and ferocious Africans was approved by 
Omniscience for the ultimate redemption, regeneration, and exaltation of that 
degraded and once hopeless race. He believed that it would, at no distant day, 
eventuate in the aggregate welfare of mankind, and especially in the civilization, 
liberty and restoration to their native land of the captive Africans. In the dis- 
pensations of Providence, immediate evil is often the instrument of ultimate 
good. The Egyptian bondage and self-sacrificing pilgrimage of the devoted 
Jews were designed for the wholesome reformation of that distinguished people ; 
the bloody overthrow of the Canaanites was the precursor of the enjoyment of 
the promised land by the depositories of the oracles of the true and only God ; 
the terrible havoc and final subjugation of the Gauls and Britons by the'Roman 
Eagle, infused into the Celtic race, then in a state of semi -barbarism, the elements 
of civilization and the principles of Christianity ; the subjugation of the im- 
perial Romans and the desolation of their fair and voluptuous country by the Van 
dalism of the North, engrafted on a declining stock the vital germ of that en- 
during liberty so gloriously illustrated by the Anglo-Saxon race ; the sanguinary 
persecutions of the Puritans, and their consequent exile to the wilds of America, 
planted in this congenial land the seeds of civil and religious liberty ; and these 
seminal principles, dropped, as from the clouds, in a country reserved until the 
fullness of time for the hopeful development and glorious illustration of moral 
truth and power among men, even now have grown to maturity and promise to 
fructify the world, and, to prepare this theatre for the accomplishment of the 
greatest ultimate good, the uncivilized aborigines were driven from their council 
fires and the graves of their fathers, and now, almost exterminate, wander in the 
far West, homeless, hopeless, and forlorn. These, said he, are but a few of the 
infinite multitude of historic events, illustrating the mysterious truth that instru- 
mentalities, wrong and grievous to human vision, are often employed for con- 
summating the most beneficent ends — all things working together for the ultimate 
good of mankind and glory of the Ruler of the Universe. 

"There is a striking analogy, in this respect, between the phenomena of the 
moral and those of the physical universe. The fire from Heaven in the lightning's 
flash strikes down the young and the old, the beautiful and the strong, the patriot 
and the sage ; and the people mourn ; the relentless tempest of the skies leaves 
desolation in its mournful track ; and the elements are charged with reckless ruin. 
But the lightning and the whirlwind purify a morbid atmosphere and drive away 
pestilence. In like manner moral agents, grievous in their immediate operation 
on special objects, may finally result in aggregate blessings. And who can venture 
to presume that negro slavery in America may not have been sanctioned by Heaven 
as the most fitting means for effecting the providential end of saving and ennobling 
the doomed African race? The average condition of the wretched barbarians cap- 
tured in Africa either by their own countrymen or by the kidnapping whites and 
brought in chains to America as slaves, may not have been made more mis 
erable by any form of slavery to which they have been subjected as a collective- 
class; and that of their descendants has been improved by their progressive as- 
similation to the free and christianized whites with whom it has been their fortune 
to be associated. Already hosts of the sons and daughters of African cannibals, 
redeemed and regenerated by the genius of America, are, through the benevolent 
process of colonization in their fatherland, hopefully contributing, by their ex- 
ample, to rescue their color from degradation, and, by their influence and instruc- 
tion, to enlighten and civilize long lost Afriea. 

"As early as the year 1620, only about twelve years after the advent of the white- 
man to Jamestown, in Virginia, a British ship imported, into that infant colony of 
forlorn bachelors, a cargo of unmarried white women, and a Dutch vessel landed 
at the same place a few negroes. The women became wives and mothers; and 
thus, though poor and obscure in the country of their birth, they became the found- 
ers of this renowned Commonwealth of freemen, which herself has been blessed 
as the mother of Republics, and has won the honored title of "magna mater virum/ 1 
But the negroes were doomed to abject and hopeless slavery in a foreign climate 
and strange land. Yet it may be that each of these differently freighted ships 
was the unknown harbinger of future blessings— one to the white race, by giving 



27 

anchorage to the drifting colony and promoting its free population — and the other 
ultimate imnrorement and ana] regeneration. Cruel 
and unjust as slaver) maybe admitted to bo in itself, and mercenary and si 

• been the m<<ti \ e~ of its introduction and prolonged existence among usj 

Vfr. R., i ollateral and ulterior i mar,ai one ele 

mem in the combined th<- world's onward affaire, be finally productive 

of more ol than evil in human destiny. And although, in itself, 

; m its immediate and . es, it is 

an enormous evil, yet he had never doubted that it is more hurtful to the master 
than to the the while than to the black race. Ele was not of the pro- 

rj party — far. very far from it. lie had never considered shivery in itself a 
But, as it exists in Kentucky, it is not now within the compasss of 
human wisdom, philanthropy, and power all combined, to adopt any system of 
oompulsive liberation which will he practicable, just, safe, aud sure. Immediate 
emancipation would be madness; and in his opinion, any organized effort to in- 
itiate now a prospective scheme, would l»e premature, unwise, and self-destructive. 
For himself, he could rider any system wise, however practicable, un 

iompaniedby some effectual aud benevolent plan of deportation. He 
would never consent that the incubus of a large mass of free and degraded blacks 
should be thrown on the bosom of his posterity. Such an evil would be more in- 
tolerable than perpetual slavery, bad as that might be." 

While 1 never had any pro-slavery bias, I have always de- 
precated any foreign interference with it. Philanthropy — to 
be useful, must be considerate and practical. Slavery, in 
some form, is the natural offspring of cotemporaneous civil- 
ization and barbarism. Though in different forms, black 
slavery in our South, does what white slavery does in our 
North — the substantial difference between them being, that 
the white is more hopeful, and the black more patriarchal. 
Our African slavery in Kentucky is more tolerable than black 
freedom in the North, or peonage in Mexico, or vassalage in 
British India or elsewhere. Brought on us by the power of 
England, and recognized by the Federal Constitution, sla- 
very here has grown to such a magnitude as to make it, now 
and for years to come, an inevitable institution. All its 
difficulties aud responsibilities are felt more where it ex- 
than they can be elsewhere. We of the slavehold- 
ing 8 wll. if let alone, do the best we can with it 

for the greatest practical benefit of both races. It is a sen- 
sitive thing, which will only be injured by alien hands and 
(nrr.K And we all know that abduction of slaves by 

Abolitionists, and the obtrusive and sepulchral cry of Aboli- 
tion, wafted tor fean In fetid breezes from the North, have 
contributed more than any other cause toprolongits existence, 
rivet its chains, and a^ravate its evils. In this way, Aboli- 
tionism has done more harm than it could ever do good, \\ 

►ower commensurate with its will. But it has no con.-n 
tutional pow lavery in the States, and could not abol- 

ish it in the District ol' Columbia without paying the value 
of it as property— and which it would be the tost to offer. It 
would prefer to decoy slaves into Canada, when they will be 
doomed to au 



28 

But its will seems to be blind, headlong, and reckless of 
consequences. It can do nothing consistent with justice or 
philanthropy — nothing for the welfare of slaves or the secu- 
rity of their masters. All it has yet done has been injurious 
to both, and hurtful to our common country. What then is 
its aim? Let the noisy Abolitionist answer before his coun- 
try, as he will have to answer before the bar of his God. 
His conduct is so irrational as to authorize the apprehension 
that his is a mock philanthropy, and not mere fanaticism. 
Were he a monomaniac, as he must be if honest, his conduct 
could not be more inconsistent than it is, with reason and prac- 
tical utility. And if his motives were as pure as an angel's of 
light, his acts would be as mischievous as if he were a devil. 
Insanity alone would excuse him — and if he would avoid 
just responsibility by such a plea — we could only say to him 
and of him — 

"E'en for virtue's self, may too much zeal be had,'" 

"The worst of madmen is a priest run mad." 

Freesoilsm is more rational, but equally fruitless of good, 
so far as slavery is concerned. To limit the expansion of the 
area of slavery, would not diminish the number of slaves 
otherwise than by curtailing their comforts. And can any 
Freesoiler believe that it would be philanthropic to check the 
principle of population and destroy slavery by starving slaves, 
or by darning it up until it shall become putrid, or force an out- 
let in torrents of blood? The Freesoil party was first organ- 
ized in the winter of 1819. On a bill introduced by myself, 
for organizing the Territorial government of Arkansas, John 
W. Taylor, of New York, moved an amendment for interdict- 
ing slavery within the Territory. That was the first move- 
ment of the kind ever agitated in Congress since the inaugu- 
ration of the Constitution. It produced very great excite- 
ment, and was ably and warmly debated. The interdict was 
first carried by a majority of two votes. But, the author of 
the bill at last succeeding in an effort to refer the subject to 
a select committee, with instructions to strike out the amend- 
ment, the committee reported, accordingly, and the report 
was concurred in by the casting vote of the speaker (Clay.) 
In an argument on that question. I uttered the following sen- 
timents after discussing the power and other topics — and, 
considering these sentiments sound and applicable, I will 
quote them from my speech on that occasion : 

"But I deny that such legislation, by Congress, would ever be necessary to the 
public welfare, or would, in any case, without the hearty concurrence of the slave 
States, be either just or prudent. Congress has no power over slavery in any of 
the States of the Union. Its continuance, therefore, in the United States, under 
the guarantees of the Federal Constitution, depends altogether on the will of the 
respective States in which it exists. An expansion of its area would not, of it- 



or prolong t would certainly tend to d 

rolence would circumscribe it within 
•■ here it r.. - ich effort, ty , would be benev< 

ition of the peril 
ucident to slaver) in i te would be the n< osequence 

of ell such unplulanthropic legislation. Nor would such legislative interference be 
ouJd be inconsistent with true benevolence. 9d. I>< 
ction of the Union and one ebatof our 
•.' the terrii hi with the money or the blood of all, 

to be Invidious and onparental. would 

mpromising spirit of the Constitution — would be felt, 
intended indirectly | 10 the 

ient of thi by the public faith, and might, there 

not only alienate the affections of many from the national government, but 
. and generate and ezaepei — the 

to the Union of all others — and on a sabject most pregnant with 
> ! e and uncompromising passions ; and lastly, because no such i< 
practical good, and therefore, being gratuitous, would b 
unkind and offei if it could neither hasten the peaceful extinction of 

the condition of slaves in the United Stat itjnst 

or prudent motive of national patriotism could it be justified or extenuated? None 
but a morbid philanthropy, false in its aims and perhaps fatal in its r< lultS ; for. 
-pirit of prophecy is not necessary to enable a statesman to foresee that all 
such Congressional action will awaken 'jealousies and excite alarm, which will con- 
tribute to the unnatural prolongation of the legal existence of slavery in America, rivet, 
chains for stares, and, in its ultimate issue, might probably even dissolve the Union, 
the principles of the Declaration of Independence, principles 
rated in the affections and imbedded in the institutions of the countrymen 
ishington, every separate community of freemen ought to regulate their 
own social organization. Under the protection of these principles, the citizen? 
heir lots in Arkansas ought to decide for themselves whether sla- 
there or not, just as they would control all their other domestic 
tutions and social relations at home. Against their will, Congress ought 
i force the establishment of slavery or any other domestic relation among 
them— against their will Congress ought not to prohibit slavery there. As long 
nail exist in any of the States of the Union, every Territory of the United 
ell us each State, should be allowed to participate in it or not, as each, 
olf may choose. Let them all alone, and especially let it alone. This is 
the true and only safe policy. If, in climate, soil, and products. Arka] 
adapted to slave > induce a majority of the immigrants to it to carry 

slaves with them from es, or to incline a majority of its freemen to prefer 

the institution of slavery, why not let the felt interests and inclinations of those 
who elect to make that Southern country their home, decide its destiny as to the 
on of slavery? ' rtation of slaves from States to Territories docs 

not in number of the United States, nor establish a slaverv 

and if left to the prompting.- of their own interests and 
feelings, the peo] mould choose to maintain the institution of sla- 

osible. What is it to Congress, or to the cause 
' liberty, whether I shall continue with my slaves in Kentucky or re- 
move them to Arkansas? And why should Congress say to me, "you shall not 
live in Arkansas unless you firs! Bell or manumit your slaves V 1 Was the power 

. such purpose? Or could the appli- 
the harmony of the Union, or the cause of 
emanc of slavery, or thi to prosperity and gen- 

eral welfan of the United S rery is geographical. °Ar- 

DS in slave Suites will be more inclined than 
•pie in the hat' i ill he 

more of the former, to settle in territories nor! 

thirtj latitude. The,,, if Congre< 

in the terrii an ,l equality would n ■ 

mend that it draw a latitudinal line, (say about :\"i degn es north latitude I south of 
which slav • rth of which it shall not. 1 would fa 

superableohjeeti | .-.-ould prefer total abstinence from all inter- 

ference on that subject. No Congressional ad isnecessary north of that line, be- 



30 

yond which slavery, if left to its natural current, will never run, or long continue; 
and any unnecessary act of interference by Congress will excite jealous feelings, 
incompatible with the integrity of the Union. 

"And now, Mr. Chairman, allow me to say, that if the proposed restriction be 
pertinaciously insisted on and maintained by the majority of Congress, that ma 
jority will heedlessly sow wind, and may, in time to come, wofully reap the whirl- 
wind. They may, and I fear will, recklessly raise a storm that will scatter thf: 
seeds of discord over this favored land — Dragon's teeth, whose rank and pesti- 
lential crop, upas-like, may poison the vital elements of this young, robust, and 
promising Union, and finally, in the progress of desolation, may destroy its heart 
forever. 

"Let us pause and soberly reflect before we take this rash and perilous step. 
Let us take counsel of our patriarchs of '88. Let us consider our memorable 
past, and look, with patriot's hearts and statesmen's eyes, to our eventful future. 
Let us do as Washington, and Franklin, and Jefferson did, and would certainly 
do again, were they now here. And if we shall all take this prudent course, I 
feel quite sure that the provision, now, for the first time, unfortunately agitated, 
will be rejected by such a vote as will rebuke all Congressional legislation on 
American slavery, and assure, as far as the national councils can assure, peace to 
our country, and to our Union strength, and health, and hopeful influence over 
the destinies of our race, here and elsewhere — now and evermore." 

And on such views, the Missouri Compromise, next year, 
fixed the conventional line of slavery at 36.30. Of that Com- 
promise, I may be permitted to say a word on this occasion. 
I was an humble actor in that national drama, and voted for 
the Compromise. I still approve it as one of the best and 
most hopeful of all the acts of Congress. "Laudator temporis 
acti quorum pars fui" is not altogether my case. I respect 
the Compromise for its wisdom and its beneficence — it saved 
the Uunion and tranquilized a distracted nation. And I re- 
vere it also for its hallowing memories and consecrating age. 
it was just and equal to North and South. In interdicting 
slavery North of the Compromise line, it took nothing of real 
value from the South; because slavery North of that line 
would never be sufficiently productive or congenial to be of 
long duration or much value. And the Compromise conceded 
to the South all it ever asked or could reasonably expect, by 
leaving to the people, who might settle South of the conven- 
tional line, the right to admit or interdict slavery among them 
as they might deem best. This was understood by all parties, 
and is necessarily implied, as Mr. Webster and other distin- 
guished Northern men often admitted, and never denied. It 
could not be seriously denied — for surely when, as a consider- 
ation for compromise, slavery was interdicted North of an 
agreed line, and left open South of that line, the pledge was 
implied that the North would ask no more, and that Congress 
would never again disturb the peace by agitating freesoilism 
in the Southern territories, but would leave that matter, as it 
always should be left, to each Territory to settle for itself. 
For settling that great principle of representative democracy, 
the abrogation of the Compromise was, therefore, altogether 
unnecessary; and the useless repeal of it left the whole sub- 



;i 

ject open, and placed the South in a much worse condition 
for the future than it had ever heen before. The repealing 

like ever) ordinary act of legislation, unsupported bj ;m\ 
pledge ot* compromise, leaves to the non-slavenolding major- 
ity power not onl) to repeal it. hut also to refuse to permit 
slavery in any Territory South of the line. And there was 

e reason to apprehend thai adecisive portion of the ad- 
vocate of the repeal intended to untrammel that power for 
that purpose, expecting that foreigners could vote down slave- 
ry in Kansas, or that if they failed. *\k> would never be ad- 
mitted into the Union as a Blave Stair. A trap for the South 
may have been their object, and it may be the final con.-.-- 
The South ought not to have desired, and, as I be- 

e, did not seek the repeal. Nor ought Missouri to have 
desired or sanctioned it. She was the child of that foundling 
mother, and could not have been born into the Union as a 
slave State, from any other maternity; and, moreover, the 
agitation which will result from the repeal, and especially on 
her border, will do her more harm than the extension of slave- 
ry into that Territory could ever do her good. The repeal 

. in my opinion, an unnecessary act, barren of good to 
the South, and pregnant with danger to the peace and exist- 
ence of the Union. I was, therefore, opposed to it — and be- 
lieve that more than nine-tenths of the intelligence of Ken- 
tucky regretted that it was ever agitated or moved — and es- 
especially as some of its advocates were not accredited for 
good faith to the South. 

But whether the Compromise ought to be restored, is a very 
different question. Considering all the facts and consequences, 
the Convention, whose Platform we are now considering, 
seemed to think that, altogether, it would be more prudent 
to let the subject of slavery remain undisturbed in its present 

v. And I -rand on that platform, and will there quietly 

Dd as long shall remain unchanged, and my party 

nd on it. But, for myself, I presume, in candor, 

to sa} that, to pre vent all future agitation, secure peace, and 

the Union, I would be pleased to see the Compromise 

prospectively restored, if the complaining party or freesoU portion 

would tin >> l» satisfied, a, a/ pledge their faith never to disturb 

\tbit again agitati ess, iht subject of slavery, Hut mi- 

thc restoration shall thus guarantee peace hereafter, our 
Platform will never be changed as to this matter, and we 
must then all stand erect upon it a- it fa -and do the host we 
can to tranquilize our count?} . 

The Freesoiler aims at the non-extension of slavery the 
Abolitionist at its extinction. Freesoilism may be constitu- 
tional. The power of Congress, when it legislates for a Ter- 



32 

ritory, may be as plenary as that of the Territory when legis- 
lating for itself. And, consequently, as a Territory, vested 
with legislative power limited only by the National Constitu- 
tion, may admit or exclude slavery. Congress, in legislating 
for it, might do the same thing. But to control the domestic 
relations of unrepresented citizens against their will, would be 
inconsistent with the seminal principle of American indepen- 
dence, and destructive of harmony and confidence. And ; 
therefore, the Freesoiler, while he cannot mitigate or diminish 
slavery, may, by a blind philanthropy, do irreparable mischief. 
But Abolitionism is as unconstitutional as it is unphilanthropic 
and revolutionary. Hopeless of success by lawful or peace- 
ful means, it strives to hatch insurrection — as in St. Domingo; 
and must intend, in the event of such a catastrophe, to fight, 
with its foreign allies, under the black banner, and butcher 
the white race for the cause of humanity ! If this be their 
purpose, Abolitionists are incendiaries, and their plot is treas- 
on to the Constitution — treason to both the white and the 
black race — treason to the Union — and treason to liberty and 
to God. Unless they will desist from their agitation, they 
can never be recognized as our brethren — and the time may 
come when they may be treated as outlaws to save the Union 
from being outlawed by them. We neither desire nor need 
their interference in that which does not concern them — and 
we will not tolerate pragmatic intrusion. They must behave 
as neighbors and brothers ought, or expect to be treated here- 
after as enemies to our hearth-stones and our cradles. To 
meet the crisis the American party, standing on our Platform, 
unite in the determination that the agitation of slavery, as a 
national concern, shall henceforth and forever cease — and 
that resolution will not be abandoned. Every leading Aboli- 
tionist, everywhere, is therefore against us; and if there be 
an open incendiary in Kentucky, you will find him denounc- 
ing us and our whole cause. He coalesces with and wishes 
to increase the foreign and Papal parties, because he knows 
that they help him and increase his strength as their own is 
increased ; and all who go for such increase, go with him and 
strengthen his cause. We must stop this agitation. We pro- 
pose to do it. 

Leading Abolitionists and Freesoilers, knowing that neith- 
er their denunciation of slavery nor any Congressional legis- 
lation can either extirpate it or ameliorate its condition con- 
stitutionally, must intend to violate the charter of union, or 
provoke a dissolution, or consolidate the non-slaveholding 
against the slaveholding States, for purposes, not of phi- 
lanthropy or national beneficence, but of sectional power and 
their own personal aggrandizement. This is self-evident. 



33 

They are not de< eh ed — but they deceive their people, by ex- 
citing their prejudices and misleading their patriotism. A 
majority of tnose people love the Union, and revere its found- 

md defenders; and, if the) could onlj see, in its naked 
deformity, the humbuggery, incivism, and Belf-destructivenew 
of the anti-slavery mo\ cinent in the North, they would soon 

rt the black flag of reckless and ambitious agitators, who 
would jeopard the Liberty of their own kindred of the white 
in a false and mischie\ous strife about the impractica- 
ble equality of a comparative]] lew black slaves, whose con- 
dition must, as they know, be made worse by all such hope- 

agitation. it' their first object of monopolizing national 
power should be attained by a consolidation of the people of 
the non->laveholding States into an army of crusaders against 
slavery, what could they do? Abolish slavery? No. Miti- 
gate it? No — they would only aggravate it. Prevent a 
slavery that does not already exist? Not at all. Liberate a 
single slave ? Not one — but they would prevent the libera- 
tion of many who would be manumitted if their treacherous 
friends, but worst enemies, would only let them and their 
masters alone. And when all constitutional power had been 
monopolized by the contemplated organization of a Northern 
party, would the general legislation be wiser or better? 
Would any national interest, domestic or foreign, be in safer 
hands ? Would taxes be made lighter, agriculture more pros- 
perous, commerce more flourishing? Would the Union have 
more moral power abroad or more strength or peace at home? 
Xo — no — none of these blessings would flow from the pre- 
dominance of any such sectional agitation. Its inevitable 
fruits would be degradation abroad — and anarchy, discord, 
and dissolution at our own doors. Whenever such a prepon- 
derating part) shall be formed, the Union, for all practical 
purj) instantly dissolved. The dominant party could 

not}' be general welfare, and would never illustrate 

the spirit which gave birth to the Constitution; but would 
soon crucify that sacred guardian of peace, and cast lots for 
the . t Washington. 

The American party opposes — and / ivill ever oppose as long 
MM the lost hope <>( union remains — such suicidal monsters as a 
Northern and a Southern party. But this, most dreadful of 
all national calamities, must be the speedy result of contin- 
ued agitation of Abolitionism and Freesoilism in the States 
where the institution of black slavery does not exist. There- 
fore, we have resolved that, r/.v far a* in us lies, that agitation 
must and shall forei er cease. And, as an indispensable aux- 
iliary to this conservative end, resistance to the Fugitive Slave 
Law must also cease or be overcome. 



34 

The Constitution of the United States recognizes slavery — 
makes it a source of national revenue, and a basis of political 
power — and provides for its security and repose by with- 
holding from Congress any power over it. and making it the 
duty of every citizen to surrender all fugitive slaves. The 
history of its adoption proves that had not this wise compro- 
mise been made by the organic law of the Union, no national 
government would ever have been established. Then, when 
the supreme law over every court and citizen of the United 
States recognizes and engages to protect slaves as property, 
and taxes it as such, what constitutional right has any man 
or tribunal in any State to deny that my slave, by the law of 
Kentucky and according to the paramount law of the United 
States, is my property? And, when the Constitution en- 
joins on Ohio the fundamental duty of surrendering to me my 
servant w T ho has fled to that State, what right has she or any 
of her citizens to aid his escape, or resist reclamation, or even 
refuse to aid in legal restitution? As such resistance and re- 
fusal had been vexatiously frequent while the execution of 
the law had depended on state authority, the present fugitive 
slave law was lately enacted, under the most solemn sanctions, 
for securing the more faithfnl fulfillment of the constitution. 
Its authority is but an echo of the mandate of the constitution 
itself. And there is nothing unconstitutional in its prescribed 
mode of operation. The constitution does not require a jury 
in any such case; and, had the law required it in a non-slave- 
holding state, anti-slavery prejudices might have frustrated 
the purpose of the constitution, and converted the law into a 
mockery. As early in our colonial history as the year 1643 
the American colonists entered into a solemn compact provi- 
ding that, "if any servant run away from his master into any 
u of the confederate jurisdictions, the said servant, on a magis- 
" trate's certificate, or other due proof, shall be delivered up to 
" his master." This applied to free 'persons, as well as to 
slaves — and our Constitution neither requires nor ever con- 
templated any other proof or mode of trial. One of its great 
objects was to inspire confidence and fraternity between the States, 
and facilitate free and harmonious intercourse, personal and com- 
mercial, between all the citizens of all the States, unaffected by their 
local institutions which each State was left free to regulate for itself, 
ivithout foreign intrusion or rebuke, any degree of which woidd en- 
eroach on State sovereignty, and outrage the pateimoJ and compre- 
hensive spirit of the national compact. To aid in the effectuation 
of this patriotic purpose, it recognizes slavery as a legal do- 
mestic institution, and interdicts all interference with it by 
States where it does not exist. And it also guarantees to the 
citizens of each State all the privileges and immunities of 



35 

in tlif several Si a guarantee of my 

motional right of transit through Ohio with my lawful prop 
or with my servant^ bond or free, tad wli.it right, therefore. 
can Ohio bave to saj tl, entering thai > s tat<- with my 

servant, he becomes free, and is no longer under any legal 
obligation to me? Even if Ohio and Kentockj were inde- 
pendent nation-, under no common government, such a course 
would be inconsistent with international comity , and a breach 
of the modern law <>t' civilized nation.-. And hence, even 
gland is justly responsible to us for the asylum afforded in 
ida to our runaway or abducted Blaves. What right has 
Aw to sa\ what is my property by the law of Kentucky or of 
the United States? And does she not owe it to a becoming 
comity to allow us, by some law of extradition, to reclaim 
our fugitive slaves who take refuge in her neighboring colo- 
ny? The fact that hitherto they could not be recovered, is 
the chief cause of all our national troubles about slavery. 
Had there been no asylum in Canada, but few would have 
run away — and Abolitionists would have stolen none— -for 
they are unwilling to be encumbered with them at home. Had I au- 
thority. I would demand of England justice and rspose on 
thi> disturbing subject, and, if she should persist, I would, 
forthwith, resort, in self-defense, to obvious and practicable 
remedies in our own hands — and Canada would thank us for 
it. I have long thought that our government has been cul- 
pably remiss in neglecting this great concern so long — and 1 
cannot avoid the belief that, had Canada been the colony of 
a weak power like Mexico or Spain, an American President 
would, long ago and promptly, have done like Washington,vrho, 
in 1789, among his first diplomatic acts, demanded and ob- 
tained from Spain restitution of slaves who had fled from Geor- 
gia to Florida, then a colony of Spain as Canada is of England. 
Unless our international rights and the spirit of the Consti- 
tution be upheld in reference to our slave property, the Union 
cannot long stand. Willing to sacrifice all subordinate inter- 
ior its preservation, I would unite with any party whose 
principles are best adapted to the end. / should never be 
willing U it for the poor privilege of taking slaves to 

And I cannot believe that the Freesoil party would 
it up or bring it into greater peril by refusing to co-ope- 
rate with its best friends in maintaining silence on that fruit 
Oil and compromising on the essential means for 
'in living, and exalting our character as a i 
and united people Believing that this is tin- aim of th< 
American party, and thai its self-sacrificing principles 
congenial with the end and indispensable to the full and abid- 
ing effectuation of it. I have joined that party, as you. with 



36 

the same motive, have all done. And I have resolved, as 
you have doubtless done, that, as long as it shall stick to its 
principles, I will stick to it; and will either rejoice with it in 
the salvation of the Union and the regeneration of its charac- 
ter, or mourn with it over the broken columns and melancholy 
ruins of the world's best model of popular self-government. 
Many Freesoilers nobly stand on this, as well as every other 
plank of the American Platform. But a majority of them, 
while they stand with us on every other plank, insist on this 
being taken out, or modified by a restoration of the Missouri 
Compromise; and doubtless we shall all co-operate as to 
every thing else, and we hope soon to concur as to this sec- 
tional diversity, also. No patriot, when he sees the issue, 
can prefer the abstraction of Freesoilism, to the practical 
blessings of the Union and constitutional nativeism. But 
should any or a majority of the honest Freesoilers persist in 
an irrational course, still we feel assured that our Platform, 
if upheld by the South, will be made triumphant by the union 
upon it of a large portion of our non-slaveholding people, 
and States. And if our party cannot thus restore harmony 
and repose, and save and exalt the Uuion, no other can, or will 
ever effect that object. But if we fail, the South, united on our 
Platform, can protect its own rights — and Kentucky can and 
will maintain her own liberty and independence, and will still try, as 
hitherto, to pulsate as the heart of the American Union. 

The Democratic party, if it should vainly adhere to its 
organization, will never quiet the slavery agitation. It does 
not propose to do it, and opposes the only scheme that could 
effect it. It is broken down in the North, and is hastening to 
extinction or denationalization. If a remnant of it can be 
saved, it must be by fraternization with foreigners, abolitionists, 
disunionists, and papists. And this last hope of leaders, who 
cling to power, is proved by their devotion to foreigners and 
foreign policy, and is foreshadowed by their press in the fol- 
lowing significant feeler : " There can be no such things as na- 
tional parties except upon the basis of an entire exclusion of the sub- 
ject of slavery from their political creeds— these truths will com- 
mand ready assent with Abolitionists." By putting an anti- 
Union plank in its late Baltimore Platform, and ignoring 
slavery, that partj r effected a coalition with all the factions, 
and elected its President, who has rewarded Disunionists, Pa- 
pists, Foreigners, and Abolitionists, by elevating them to high 
offices, over the heads of native, Union, Protestant Ameri- 
cans. Never before, since the inauguration of Washington, 
did any party, claiming to be national, proclaim, as an article of 
its creed, the anti-national heresy that a State has the politi- 
cal right to overrule the United States on questions of national 
power. But this was done by the Democratic party in their 



37 

Baltimore manifesto. They adopted resolutions declaring 
that the Federal Constitution isaeompad between the States, 
each State forming one party, and States the other 

part) that there i- no common judgi of constitutional power 
between them- that each has an equal right to judge for itself 
— that "a nullification, by those sovereignties^ of all unauthor- 

actfl under color of thai instrument, is the rightful reme- 
dy," — and thai all acts of 1 —even against robbing 
the mail -which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, 
other than those enumerated in the Constitution, are altogether 
void." This is ultra federal and nullifying. What more could 
disunion ists. abolitionists, or radicals have ever expected or 

>ed ? What could have tended more to give them aid 
and comfort, especially when they were also, by the same 
party, elevated to honor and power, to the discouragement of 
conservatism? The instant I saw that Platform, I believed, 
and said that, if any thing could elect the Democratic nomi- 
nees, that disorganizing plank would do the job. And it did 
it. And I said too, that, if it should do it, it would thereby 
knock the Fugitive Slave Law in the head. And it did. 
How could that law r be enforced against the will of a State, 
when the patronage and power of the dominant party were 
pledged to sanction and sustain, as rightful, a nullification of 
it by State authority? What more could any party have done 
for abolition, and disunion, and faction, and strife? And un- 
der that encourageing sanction has not Massachusetts virtu- 
ally nullified the Fugitive Slave Law? And has not the Su- 
preme Court of Wisconsin, elected by foreign influence, denied 
that the Supreme Court of the Union has authority to uphold 
that law. and refused to recognize it as a law for that State? 
And who is most responsible for those monstrous deeds — the 
immediate actors, or the Democratic party which, by its dis- 
organizing doctrines, invited and encouraged them? The 
latter surely — without whose countenance and patronage they 
would never have been attempted. As an ostensible set-off' 
the Democratic President approved the late abrogation of the 
Missouri Compromise, and thereby provoked his allies, who 
have sought temporary revenge by crushing his party in the 
non-slaveholding States. But, on the other hand, as if to 
neutralize the repeating act, and mock the South, he approv- 
ed the legalization in Kansas, of the votes of fresh unnatu- 
ralized immigrants who were tcrnpted to overrun the Territo- 

and he moreover commissioned, to head and to help them 
with veto and patronage, a Freesoil Governor! And, tie 
tore, the people of .Missouri, deeply interested in the question 
i ry in their bordering Territory, and feeling that they 
had as much right to vote on that question as ship loads of 
unnaturalized anti-slavery foreigners, went over the line and 



38 

voted, in self-defense, in defiance of the denunciations of the 
armored Freesoiler — an act which, though unlawful, might 
have been expected as a natural movement to counteract an 
insidious and most outrageous conspiracy to defeat the osten- 
sible principle of the organic law of Kansas by inviting into 
that Territory all sorts of unnaturalized anti-slavery foreign- 
ers to overrule, by their spurious votes, American citizens, on 
the question of slavery. 

Under the lead of Papists, Foreigners, Abolitionists, and 
Democratic politicians, and with the alleged sanction of the 
President, the popular branch of Congress, sympathizing with 
foreign influence, passed a bill for inviting the immigration 
of foreigners from all parts of the world, by offering to each 
head of a family 160 acres of our land, as a premium for 
settling in our country, and helping to govern native Ameri- 
cans, and swell the anti-slavery tide! And yet the same body, 
at the same time — until forced against their will by public 
opinion — treated with neglect, and even apparent contempt, 
the prayers sent up for a little land by the survivors and the 
widows and orphans of the dead soldiers of the war of 1812 
against combined Indians and foreigners! These facts alone 
prove the fearful increase of foreign influence, its approach 
to preponderance, and its alarming tendencies. And the un- 
propitious acts, chiefly of the Democratic party, at which we have 
just glanced, have torn open and aggravated the wounds which, as 
ice all hoped, tod been healed by the soothings of compromise. 

To arrest the inflammation, and cure these chronic sores, is 
an anxious purpose of the American party. The best, and 
perhaps only remedy now, is total abstinence. And that, 
therefore, our platform prescribes. And yet the outstand- 
ing portion of the Democracy, which has contributed so 
much to the necessity of our organization, not only refuses 
to unite with us in this first of all present national objects, 
but seems to prefer a fusion with the opposing factions, ad- 
heres with a death-like grasp to foreigners and papists, and 
while it thus persists in adhering to anti-slavery agitators, 
it denounces us for Abolition sympathies, and has the un- 
graceful temerity to claim for itself nationality and saving 
power ! The record is our answer. It proves all I have said : 
and it shows also that the Democracy of Pennsylvania, Ohio, 
and some other States are now, through convention and else- 
where, denouncing interminable war against slavery — and 
that a late Democratic Convention at the Capital of Kentucky, 
endorsed, without stint or exception, all the acts of their President. 

With confidence we submit, to a candid world, the ques- 
tion — whether such a party is national, or whether, with all 
its expected coalitions, it can ever harmonise the Union or 
rescue and save the pure American principles of our fathers 



39 

and of the institution- which we haye inherited as our Amer- 
Birthright. And we feel Bureof tin- award that our 

the only national party, and the only one which can hope to 
impliah the great work of onr country's salvation. Then 
we may hope that no American patriot, who will become ac- 
quainted with our principles and objects, will, on calm reflec- 
tion, withhold his co-operation. And we would call on every 
such citizen, whether of tin- Whig or the Democratic party, 
to disregard the threats of ambitions leaders, and unite with 
as in our great American mission. 

Brother Americans — You now understand the platform you 
have conn* to consider: Will you all stand on it? You see the 
work before you. Are you ready for it? You know your 
many-headed antagonist, of every doctrine, and nation, and 
tongue. Are you resolved to face him and never capitulate 
as long as the flag of our union shall wave over your heads? 
With hearts thus resolved, your victory is sure. Your cause 
is your country's. It is not the cause of politicians, but of 
that people whose voice is the voice of God. The throb of the 
American heart gave it its first impluse. And that united 
heart — with the protection of that Providence who guarded 
and guided our Fathers, will, in due time, bless its triumphs 
and its fruits. The prevalence of Reason over Passion — of 
Law over Anarchy — of American principles over Foreign 
principles — of American men over Imported men — of Amer- 
ican Religion over Roman Superstition — and of Liberty of 
Conscience over Papal Tyranny — these will be its triumphs: 
And its fruits will be UNION, PEACE, and WHOLESOME 
PROGR]> 

In such a cause you should neither fear nor falter. Like 
every other great developement or moral reform it will meet 
with furious and obstinate opposition, and may long have its 
trials and its vicissitudes. We need not expect its thorough 
success in its first infantile struggle. SAM — -though Herculean 
in his Cradle — may reserve, for his maturer growth, the great 
work of destroying the Ncmcian Lion and the Wild Boar of 
Erymtmtkus. But, if his friends will only stand by him and 
nurse him patiently, lie will, in proper time, rid our land of 
these lawlee and also cleanse its great Augean Sta- 

ble — and his heel will not fail to bruise the head of the Ler- 
Snake that tries to corrupt our American Paradise. 

Offic« and demagogues will die hard. You must 

expect their violent opposition. You must be prepared to 
meet also the vulgar prejudice against reform which our 
fathers ot '76 and the reformers since the 10th century had to 
encounter. Do not despair if the future progress of your 
cause be slow as that of all wholesome and enduring growth 
is apt to be Denounced, as in such selfish times, all true 



40 

patriots may expect to be, by sinister place-men who prefer 
notoriety to fame and their own aggrandizement to that of 
their country, you must be patient, firm, and persevering. 
Adhere to your principles in every vicissitude of fortune. 
Trust no man who is opposed or unfaithful to them. Vote 
for no one who flatters your passions or courts your suffrage. 
Call to your service your ablest and most trustworthy men 
who will dignify office and faithfully fulfill all its trusts. Be 
ever true to the Washingtonian maxim that "office should seek 
the man, and not the man the office " The practical recognition 
of that necessary truth in Republics, will be a great American 
reform which alone might save and exalt our institutions. 
But if, in this vital matter, you follow the example of other 
modern parties, you will soon degrade your principles, pervert 
their objects, and degenerate into a pestilent faction. True 
to your principles, faithful in the illustration of them, and 
shielded by conscious rectitude, you may defy obloquy and 
proscription, and look, with confidence, for an American re- 
formation as benificent as the American Revolution was glo- 
rious. And though yours may be a battle of Armageddon, 
reason, patriotism and philanthropy must finally prevail. 
And may you live to see the dawn of America's millennial 
liberty and light. If intelligence and virtue are yet to guide 
our countrymen and guard our country, our cause is surely 
safe. Address the public reason and draw on the public vir- 
tue, and our country's God will, in due season, bless your toils, 
and a grateful posterity will hallow the birth of the American 
party. 

There is reason to believe that ours is the party to which 
Henry Clay alluded, when, in his last speech in the capitol 

of Kentucky, he announced his readiness to join a great "UNION PARTY." 
And here, in the presence of that son who stood by him in death, I presume to 
express the confident belief that, had the Patriarch of Ashland survived until this 
day, we would all have seen him standing, with peerless crest, on the Union platform 
of our American party. This, in outline, has been my platform for years, during 
which time I have often commended it incidentally in public ad >esses and other- 
wise. Having grown old upon it, while it was forlorn and hopeless, I can never 
desert it, whatever fortune may betide it. And now, when hosts of true-hearted 
Americans are raising it above the clouds, who among us will prove recreant and 
let go his hold? Whatever others may do, I will stick to it in good and in evil re- 
port. And, if foreign foes and domestic factions shall tear it to pieces, a few of 
the Old Guard will cling to its last plank as their country's last hope. And if 
that also shall perish, they will, like the old Soldier of Pompey, gather up the 
fragments and burn them as the funeral pile of American liberty. 

But if, as we trust, it is the workmanship of the Guardian Genius of America, 
it will rise above every besetting storm, and finally, culminating in the Heavens, it 
will stand a monument of American patriotism and a watchtower for all mankind. 

Then, my Mends — with "Union and liberty — one and inseperable — now and for- 
ever" — gleaming on our banner, let us run with patience the race set before us, 
and, pressing on to the mark of our high calling — we shall, with the favor of 
Providence, win for our country the highest prize of humanity on earth. And 
then, and not sooner, our mission will be ended, and our destiny revealed — and 
then, too, may America hopefully look up to her own serine sky for the promised 
rainbow of peace. 



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